


In Winter

by Smaragdina



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-19
Updated: 2012-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 14:47:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smaragdina/pseuds/Smaragdina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"But the room is solid around them and wherever he turns he can see the ghost of her and the shade of where she is not. It is all so real. The air tastes of winter. The shadows are correct." This is not a memory where the Outsider belongs. (Written for an Anon's prompt of "Corvo/Jessamine first time" on Tumblr).</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Winter

The light is blue, the shadows are blue, and the sky outside the tall arched windows is blue, deep blue. It is not the color of the Void. It is the color of the underbellies of whales or the skin of the sea before it is broken by a storm. It is the color of winter itself. It is, of course, the color of a particular night long years ago at the crest of Dunwall Tower; and Corvo takes a step back, tensing, and the Void ripples around him like water.

“No,” he hisses, “not this.”

“But you dream about it so often,” says the Outsider. His voice is so reasonable. He steps out of the air and the nothing outside, through the empty window-frame as if it is a door. The room seems to grow solid around him. Curtains and the writing desk in the corner, the tall yellow lamps, the books on shelves that line the walls – they bend toward him as if he is light. The glass on the shelves holds no reflection. “I thought you would enjoy this,” he says mildly. “I wasn’t wrong, was I?”

_“Leave.”_

“Is it different because I’m here?”

The _yes_ is too obvious and inadequate to voice and so Corvo turns away, sharp, hand pressed to his mouth. But the room is _solid_ around them and wherever he turns he can see the ghost of her and the shade of where she is not. It is all so real. The air tastes of winter. The shadows are correct. He can even hear the sea against tall rocks far below, steady as a heartbeat.

And out of the corner of his eye he can see the Outsider walk over to the desk and circle it, studying, running a hand over the wood as if searching for fingerprints.

“She was sitting here,” he murmurs, and his voice is the voice of a child at lessons, “it was late at night. The pins were falling out of her hair. The candles were low and you were trying not to look at her because –”

And Corvo flees.

And if there is one difference between the Dunwall Tower of years ago and its facsimile in the depths of the Void, it is this: here, now, there is only one hallway out of this room, and the only way it leads is up.

He follows it like a man sleepwalking or drunk, fingers to the wall, barely needing to see, because of course this is pulled from his head and of _course_ he has been here before. On the landing, as he’d known he would, he finds the first of her gloves. Dark velvet against red carpet. It holds the shape of her hand still and Corvo steps around it as he had not back then, as if passing too close to it will sear his skin. He is not sure if the beating in his ears is the distant sound of the sea or mere blood.

Three steps up he finds the second glove and a hairpin that is silver and sharp as a blade.

Another hairpin. An earring, pearl, moon-bright. Her shawl, draped over the bannister of the second landing like a flag and he does not look, he does not look, he finds himself taking the steps two at a time and he does not want to and he _cannot_ look.

 At the door to her chambers he finds a shower of hairpins like rain upon the floor where her hair had finally come loose. No. It had not come loose. He’d pulled it free, and –

Corvo stops.

The necklace had burst when it hit the floor, and the jewels are spread in a sunburst all around, glittering white in the blue shadow. Some have shattered. The shards are fine and sharp as needles. They ring themselves around a throat that is no longer there in a circle as perfect as a noose – and Corvo finds himself frozen with his hand flat against the chamber door.

This was not how it had happened.

He _knows_ , because he’d caught the necklace before it could fall and that moment had been enough to stop them, make her catch her breath and pull back from pressing him to the wall and remember enough to –

“You went back,” says the Outsider, from a few steps below. In  his arms he holds her gloves, her shawl, the pins and earrings bright in his hands. “You went back and you picked up everything that had fallen and you stopped, here. You knew that you should turn around and go downstairs and you did not want to. You were so afraid. It was winter, and you wanted her as if she were the sun.” He pauses, tilts his head. “I’m sorry. Did I get something wrong?”

“If I go in there,” Corvo manages, around a throat that is tight as a curled fist, “will she be alive?” He swallows hard. “She’ll - she’ll be lying in a pool of blood, won’t she?”

“Will she?”

The Outsider’s smile is gentle and holds nothing, it seems, of cruelty. He holds out his hands. The shawl and gloves and hairpins, all, they vanish at Corvo’s touch; they melt into nothingness, and the tower whispers away around them, until it is only the empty blue shadows of the Void in winter. Until it is only the sound of the sea below them as it beats against the rocks of Dunwall Tower on a winter night so long ago, still, thundering as a heart.


End file.
